Writing Center

Symptom Tracker

Problems With Documentation & Plagiarism

Students often Plagiarize without even knowing it.

Everybody knows that copying someone else’s writing is wrong: whether it’s someone sitting next to you during an exam or taking a paper posted on the web and submitting it as your work—this is considered cheating. And this form of cheating is often called plagiarism.

But where do you draw the line between “cheating” and using a source?

FACT: Whenever you use the WORDS or IDEAS of another writer, you need to tell your reader where those words or ideas came from.

Documentation is a standard way to tell your reader the source of your ideas.

Documentation Style

This refers to the guidelines writers follow when they name their sources: